Piracy

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I mentioned "this isn't about you" because we're on a message board and people are allowed to move discussion forwards rather than letting it die when people agree on something or when someone concedes. It was in response to you saying "but I didn't bring that up."

 

I don't understand your hypocrisy statement. You seem to be talking in generalities and making vox populi statements when we're the type that isn't going to be so closed minded and typical. We're the ones that care way too much about this sort of thing so we're not going to have run of the mill opinions. It really doesn't matter how most people think. What matters is what the people on this discussion board think of these issues.

[slithy toves]

ugh, tl;dr everyone else's opinions but i will submit that the first time i ever played several games that were never released outside of japan or only released on the snes (which i didn't own until i bought a used system years later) was on an emulator. in that case i'm not giving the people who made the system or game money and why should i care if i get it for free at that point? i'd rather get it for free than pay some dickface smiling at his previous taste, if you are willing to sell it for some much why aren't you keeping it? that is just the way i feel, and i'll probs play a game ppl love/hate (chrono cross) and that i never played on my psp instead of paying some dbag for it on ebay because of it. am i wrong? everyone i know who loves music totes supports me if i don't buy music from ebay and just copy it in absence of a way to buy it from the artist. i feel the same way about comics / books, so why should i feel differently about videogames? classics are classics, no?

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

So you're not a fan of supporting Gamestop then? That's how I am. I like to support those who put in the work not those who wish to make money off someone else.

[Little Pirate]

I tried to find a clip from South Park where they show depressed celebrities who weren't able to get their awesome private jet/shark tank bar/mansion because too many people downloaded their songs and they instead had to wait another month before they could afford it to make a joke here but I couldn't find it.

[CorgiShinobi]

I tried to find a clip from South Park where they show depressed celebrities who weren't able to get their awesome private jet/shark tank bar/mansion because too many people downloaded their songs and they instead had to wait another month before they could afford it to make a joke here but I couldn't find it.

That episode was on a few days ago. It had Lars from Metallica waiting a month for his golden statue, Brittney Spears having to use an older model of a private jet, and I forget the rapper, but he was going to give his son a private island for his birthday.

 

Anyway, onto my statements. I don't see how I'm being a hypocrite. Maybe if the songs I use to have were retail soundtracks, yes, I would see the hypocrisy. Perhaps it's copyright infringement, but from how I've seen it for almost an entire decade, the industry doesn't seem to care about video game music being used in such a manner. After all, you can go onto YouTube and find multiple videos using said songs simply to play the song for viewers. Heck, how about sites where musicians remix video game music?

 

You've got to think, why would I even have these songs in the first place? The strongest possibility is because I have purchased the original work, a.k.a. the video game. If I have the Windmill Hut loop on my music player, it's because when I was playing Ocarina of Time I came to like it. Same thing with Tetris Type A, because when I played Tetris I loved the theme.

 

Truth be told, I think some games can't be bothered to offer a retail soundtrack. After all, is there a large demand for such a product? Usually owning the game alone is enough for a consumer, if I'm not mistaken. That's where the real money is, but if you have something like Halo or GTA, you have the chance to gain a little extra revenue from releasing a couple CDs.

 

Either way you view it, I'm technically not a hypocrite. Before you begin a counter argument, know that all my video game music was lost in 2006 when the family PC crashed. I can't be bothered to download any of those songs again as the site I used has become a large mess. I've regained some music I lost, but that would be thanks to online shopping and FYE.

 

That's what can make a difference: your local retailer. Large retail chains like Best Buy or Target are not going to carry, for example, a wide selection of anime and music. If it weren't for Hastings or FYE, I would probably be labeled as a pirate because I might have a illegal copy of FLCL OST 3, or any of my Gurren Lagann volumes (not the current volumes, the old ones)!

 

EDIT: Heck, this whole entire time I've been saying "songs" and "soundtrack" when in actually the best label you could give my once-possessed media was "MIDI loop." I can't really say those would make for a strong soundtrack album...

Edited January 3, 2011 by Atomsk88

[Akuam4n]

Concerning the OSTs to games, if I have bought the game, and I cannot find the OST in a store anywhere, or they have no released it, I will try and find it online and download it. I think they released a Metroid Prime soundtrack,but only in Japan. Should I have to pay out the ass to import the entire soundtrack from Japan? I thought no. I just downloaded it (and later got rid of it, but that's not the point).

 

I own every Halo OST nay Halo Wars (never played it D:), and I even own the score to Bioshock on vinyl. I mean, some of the OSTs get so expensive to import I could just go out and buy the game again. It's ridiculous. Sometimes the publishes loose out on my money, because they don't release what I would gladly buy; but I understand that there is only a small minority that would purchase the soundtracks. I still think they should release them anyway...

 

Although, currently, most triple A games have been, but a lot of times only on itunes. I want it on an actual CD.

 

EDIT: http://www.amazon.com/METROID-PRIME-FUSION-ORIGINAL-SOUNDTRACKS/dp/B0042GXOEW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294052585&sr=1-1

 

200 dollars on Amazon. I don't feel like looking on ebay.

Edited January 3, 2011 by Iamaquaman

[LucasReis]

Well, about piracy, I won't lie. I pirated a lot during my life, especially during the PS1 and a good chunk of the PS2 era as well. I didn't have a job and I live in a place where games are really expensive.

 

Nowadays, I just prefer to focus on quality and buy my original games (I have a lot of methods including grey market, websites, trips, etc). Every month I buy at least one or two games, and accessories, etc.

 

However, I won't lie, I have a lot of mame roms in my mame machine. I mean, I don't see any problem with it especially because I have Street Fighter in every possible available retail version in original copies, so I just play the roms of these arcade games and I have no guilt about it whatsoever. I play older console roms too (I have a modest collection of old cartridges - NES, Snes, Master System, Mega Drive, Atari, etc), but I do play roms too. A rom I really like to play is Street Fighter Rainbow Edition, and I wouldn't be able to get that on any system besides Mame, because the rom is already counterfeit. Don't get me wrong, the game sucks balls, but it's really fun to play with friends!!

 

About pirating current stuff, I understand why people do that, but I have some friends who are downright hypocrites. I mean, they have jobs, they earn good money, but they still pirate because they prefer to spend on other stuff. I would understand if they didn't have any money or anything, but that's not the case, these guys spend big money on other stuff but they refuse to pay for games.

 

So, essencially, I like to have my games in a legal way, I even buy a lot of games through digital distribution because I can avoid the high taxes in Brazil. But these current pirates are sad... they pirate a lot of games and never finish a lot of them, they have an enormous backlog and can't play online or even buy smaller indie games from Live and PSN (which are a very important part of this generation). It doesn't pay off to be a pirate nowadays and a lot of people don't understand it.

 

However, for retro stuff, I like to emulate stuff on Mame, openly.

[Yantelope]

Are there any numbers or any kind of research to show whether or not heavy DRM affects sales of videogames? Additionally, has there been any kind of research to show whether delaying or canceling the PC version of a game affects sales? The argument has long been that piracy is a leading cause of lost sales but the only real figure we have is the number of times those games are pirated. The "lost sales" numbers are all guesses so has anyone bothered to look at the "solutions" to see if any of them do anything at all? I mean, speaking strictly pragmatically, shouldn't game companies just evaluate whether heavy DRM or no DRM leads to more sales and just proceed in that direction. I'd have to guess that they probably have done some research to this effect and that's why games like Red Dead Redemption didn't see a PC release.

[Cyber Rat]

I'm not sure, but I think someone in this thread mentioned something about "every pirate copy = 1 lost sale". But it really is unreasonable to expect that every single person who pirated the game would have bought it.

 

As for basing PC releases on market/pirate research, I don't really trust the publishers in that regard. GTA4 was a poorly optimized port and barely worked and then all of a sudden RDR isn't released because of piracy? (I'm not sure they gave piracy as the official reason though? Or did they?) Same thing with Epic and their comment about moving Crysis 2 to consoles. The poor sales of UT3 and Crysis 1 have more to do with the former being boring compared to previous installments and the latter being an interactive unoptimized benchmark than piracy killing the PC gaming market. If that were the case, indie titles wouldn't have flourished as much as they did on the PC, but would have found their home only XBLA and PSN. Of course the publisher will blame piracy rather than their own poor perfomance. The only time publishers ever say "yo, we messed up" is MP only titles (like Square's statement over FFXIV).

[Yantelope]

I agree that 1 pirated copy does not equal 1 lost sale and that was largely my point. You can't calculate actual lost revenue to piracy. All you can do is gauge the results of your anti-piracy measures and even then there are still a lot of variables.

 

GTA IV PC seems to be pretty well supported to this day by the Rockstar staff including the DLC release so it's not like they just threw out a crappy port and then just dropped it. RDR was operating on the same engine so the omission of a PC version is glaring. I don't know if Rockstar ever gave a clear statement as to why a PC version was not released though. In the case of Crysis I think the move to consoles is a natural one to bolster sales because you're just reaching a much broader market even though I do believe that Crytech mentioned piracy as a reason for the inclusion of consoles. Indie games on the PC are pirated like crazy but thanks to their super low prices they also make money. The success of indie games is not an indication that they don't suffer severe piracy rates. Didn't the creators of World of Goo go on about the ridiculous rate of piracy? I believe that was part of what led them to their "name your price" sale.

[Mr. GOH!]

Just to be clear; wasn't GTA IV for PC announced well after its release on console? I think there's still some hope for an RDR PC version. Indeed, there have been rumors on various gaming sites to the effect that Rockstar will announce a PC port in the next month or so.

 

I think some folks blame piracy for the historically lower sales figures for PC versions of multiplatform games and the higher risk of lower sales for PC-only titles. I'm not entirely convinced that's the case.

[deanb]

Are there any numbers or any kind of research to show whether or not heavy DRM affects sales of videogames? Additionally, has there been any kind of research to show whether delaying or canceling the PC version of a game affects sales? The argument has long been that piracy is a leading cause of lost sales but the only real figure we have is the number of times those games are pirated. The "lost sales" numbers are all guesses so has anyone bothered to look at the "solutions" to see if any of them do anything at all? I mean, speaking strictly pragmatically, shouldn't game companies just evaluate whether heavy DRM or no DRM leads to more sales and just proceed in that direction. I'd have to guess that they probably have done some research to this effect and that's why games like Red Dead Redemption didn't see a PC release.

 

I don't think there's many figures other than "this many torrents of our game were downloaded the past year".It'd be pretty hard thing to research but I'd want to compare the sales of titles on:Sales of games with demos vs those withoutPiracy rates of games with demos vs those without (that'd probably be pretty easy.)Sales of games with heavy DRM vs those of none/light. (Though most games with none tend to be indie types or Gog n such. So it'd be hard to judge if it has impact.. Though you could certainly compare sales of say AC1 vs the ubisoft internet-required DRM on AC2)Piracy rates of games with heavy n light/no DRM (I'd maybe say do this at a ratio due to the above indie thing. So like heavy games have a ratio of sold 10:9 pirated, and light with 10:4 or something.)Sales of games sold with console release vs delayed PC release.

I'm not a statistician or have access to anywhere near the required figures n methodology. But if I did I'd of done this a while ago cos it's something that's interested me for a while.

I think the main problem with trying to get figures for all of this is that games naturally sell different amounts to each other and you'd have noway to compare the effects on a single game. If we had some parallel universe making machine we could have one universe where game has a demo, one universe without then compare the sales. But that's impossible, so the hardest part would be making some reasonable benchmark to compare the sales to. The control I think it's called.

As for Crysis that actually sold about 1.5million copies which is a decent amount. Enough to get you in Top 20 charts on PS3 n 360. Which isn't bad for a game most folks couldn't run at the time. And that was within the first few months. Many years and Steam n EA sales later I'd expect it's legendary status to pushed it's sales even higher.

As for Epic: They said Piracy is why Gears 2 n 3 aren't coming to PC. There was never a reason for why Halo 3, ODST n Reach aren't on PC (afaik) and no reason for why Fable 2 never hit PC and I'm doubtful for Fable 3. But as they are all from the same publisher who has a vested interest in another platform and all are series that released the single game on PC then went to 360 exclusive (apart from the Vista "showcase" that was Halo 2) I can't help but feel that piracy wasn't the issue

Also always worth dropping in:

http://torrentfreak.com/call-of-duty-black-ops-most-pirated-game-of-2010-101228/

PC piracy rates are embarrassingly high.

But 1/30 Xbox owners pirated Dantes Inferno and/or Alan Wake.

VGchartz (not the best resource, but if folks want to complain at least throw some other option my way) sticks the sales of Dantes Inferno on 360 at 600K atm and Alan Wake at 860K.

 

Hence why I find it fucking hilarious, Alan Wake especially, some games are made console exclusive in the name of piracy. Alan Wake already had the foundation built to be a PC game, it was more effort on their part to turn it from PC to 360 exclusive to not release the PC version. And with RDR not coming out on PC the day of it's release it could of actually seen some of the too intimate PC players buying the game and giving it a nice spike in sales.

[Yantelope]

It just seems like the companies know something or think they know something because there do seem to be a lot of PC games that never see their console based sequels return. The implication is that there is a marked effect on the sales of a console game when there is a piratable PC version of the game available.

[Cyber Rat]

[Mister Jack]

Jesus CHRIST, can't people spell like they've been to third fucking grade anymore?

[Mr. GOH!]

Jesus CHRIST, can't people spell like they've been to third fucking grade anymore?

 

They never could. It's just that the advent of the Internet has made the general inability to spell painfully obvious.

[Akuam4n]

Jesus CHRIST, can't people spell like they've been to third fucking grade anymore?

 

I blame texting; the shitty spelling has spilled over.

[Mister Jack]

No matter how good somebody's argument may be in theory, if they can't even spell monosyllabic words while making it then I just lose all interest in anything they have to say.

[Mr. GOH!]

If texting is to blame, I hope the robust and easy to use autospell functions on most smartphones helps to improve things.

[deanb]

If texting is to blame, I hope the robust and easy to use autospell functions on most smartphones helps to improve things.

 

Auto-Correct on phones these days is ducking awful. Ethanol can vouch for that.

 

Anyway Piracy. On the topic of phones:

Rooting and Jailbreaking for pirating games?

 

Personally I wouldn't bother cos I'm on and android and it's gaming status at the moment is pretty sub-par.

And on top of that Angry Birds is free on Android, so no piracy required. All Ad-supported. Which I'm perfectly fine with. I'd be up for some free ad-supported games in future. Though most publishers like to have the ad-support in the game and the initial $60 cost.

[Mr. GOH!]

If texting is to blame, I hope the robust and easy to use autospell functions on most smartphones helps to improve things.

 

Auto-Correct on phones these days is ducking awful. Ethanol can vouch for that.

 

Anyway Piracy. On the topic of phones:

Rooting and Jailbreaking for pirating games?

 

Personally I wouldn't bother cos I'm on and android and it's gaming status at the moment is pretty sub-par.

And on top of that Angry Birds is free on Android, so no piracy required. All Ad-supported. Which I'm perfectly fine with. I'd be up for some free ad-supported games in future. Though most publishers like to have the ad-support in the game and the initial $60 cost.

 

I thought most smartphones present a series of possibilities you can select from when suggesting spellings. I use such a feature it all the time on my Droid phone, at least. It's much faster than typing on the tiny keyboard. I could swear the iPhone does something similar.

 

Android apparently has a robust ROM community. Although the apps tend to cost a little money, the ROMs themselves are free and, by definition, are pirated.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Yes, standard Android keyboard has that feature, as does the iphone. I use swift key on android which does it even better and easier and adapts to the way you talk a lot better and allows for more mistakes. You can really fuck up some words and still end up auto correcting it properly.

 

Also, most Android apps are free. It's something like 70/30 where iphone apps are the other way around.

[Mr. GOH!]

Yes, standard Android keyboard has that feature, as does the iphone. I use swift key on android which does it even better and easier and adapts to the way you talk a lot better and allows for more mistakes. You can really fuck up some words and still end up auto correcting it properly.

 

Also, most Android apps are free. It's something like 70/30 where iphone apps are the other way around.

 

 

The emulator apps all cost money, IIRC.

 

Is Swift Key worth the $4.00? I don't tend to have any trouble with the default keyboard at all...

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I wasn't a fan of the default and swype wasn't very good on my shitty phone so I would recommend it. I got it for free though.

[Johnny]

This might be slightly off-topic (but not more than you guys. Smartphone app discussion, really? =P), but it's a rant I've wanted to get out of me for a while.

 

Wether game piracy is right or wrong, this is so blown out of porportion.

 

We're really good at overreacting and pretending like this is a life and death issue. While I do agree that people should probably support this industry if they like what it does for them, it's time for a reality check. Is there any industry that at times produces content I enjoy, that I still don't support in any noticable way?

 

TV would be one. I never watch TV, and when something good does come out of it I will generally either not see it, or get it pirated.

Now I know a lot of people who make a big deal out of game piracy, but nobody makes a big deal out of this.

And so what, right? It's just another industry. We can't support them all.

 

Now, I understand everyone (or at least most people) here care enough about gaming to try and support it in a real way, but just as most serious gamers I know do not care when someone doesn't support TV, we need to be ready to accept that a lot of people do not care and won't choose to support it. They'll blow their money on things that are of a higher priority to them instead.

 

Sure, if you pirate a lot of games and never pay for any of them, then you might be kind of a dick. But if not supporting this industry is your heaviest sin, I consider you a full-blown saint.

 

It's easy to lose perspective on the internet when you're surrounded by games and gaming discussion. In the end, maybe all that money I gave to indie developers could have been better served donating to cancer research. But I didn't think of it or care at the time and truth be told I'm not likely to do so next time either.